The Hired Girl(82)

His face lit up, and now that I’m writing this, all I can see is his face at that moment — his dark eyes sparkling with mischief and triumph. And seeing him so, before my mind’s eye, I feel ever so fluttery. But it isn’t my heart that flutters; it’s my stomach. It’s full of cramps and butterflies.

I’m glad my petticoats are all starched. And my blue dress with the white ferns on it is as fresh as a daisy.

If I wash my hair now, it’ll be dry by morning.





Sunday, September the third, 1911

I woke before dawn this morning so that I could say the rosary. I felt dreadfully guilty about skipping Mass, and I begged God for mercy and forgiveness. I prayed to the Blessed Mother to let things go well with David, though I really don’t know what I mean by that. But she will know. And I believe she heard my prayer, and God forgave me, because the day dawned cool and sunny and glorious.

My hair was still damp, but it went up beautifully — I got it to puff the way Mimi taught me. I pinned my hat at its most becoming angle, caught up my parasol, and stole away to the park. It was thrilling to be going to meet David, and I know I looked nicer than usual. But I was so nervous my teeth chattered. While I waited I almost wished David wouldn’t come. Then I thought how horrible it would be if he didn’t.

He was later than I expected, but he grinned at me and I felt better right away. He carries his art things in a wooden portfolio, which doubles as a drawing board. Once we fell into step, I felt happy and not so scared. After all, it was only Mr. David. And my heart soared, because I knew we would have fun.

Only, just at first, we didn’t. He is very serious about this picture he wants to make. First he introduced me to the park shepherd, Mr. Mac, who is a stately old man with a white beard. David says he fought in the Civil War. I would have liked to question him about that, but David wanted to get right down to work. He gave me chopped-up apples so I could make friends with the sheep, and he told me to kneel and feed them. I didn’t want to, because I didn’t want to kneel where the sheep had been. I was thinking of my clean petticoats. They didn’t stay clean, and the sheep lost interest in me once the apples were gone. They sidled away. David said something under his breath that I think might have been swearing. Mr. Mac only shook his head and whistled for his dog.

I was afraid David was displeased, because he hadn’t had more than a quarter of an hour to draw me with the sheep. Luckily he has a very buoyant nature. He’s like Mimi that way: fussing one minute and laughing the next. He said that sheep weren’t hard to draw, and he would sketch me now and add the sheep later on. My job was to stay very still while he sketched me with charcoal. He didn’t speak more than a few words to me, and I was forbidden to talk. It was hard to kneel and hold still all that time. Then he asked if I would mind taking off my hat and unpinning my hair and unbuttoning my collar a little.

I knew my hair would never go up so well a second time, not without a mirror and a brush. But I could see that Joan of Arc wouldn’t have worn a Dutch collar or a Cheyenne hat. So I yielded to his plea. While I untidied myself, he took out his colored chalks — pastels, they’re called.

I never realized what hard work it is to sit for an artist. I was glad he wasn’t making a sculpture of me. It was exciting to think that I was going to be part of a masterpiece. But it was also boring, because I couldn’t speak and my knees ached. And I’d been looking forward to David teasing me and maybe saying more about me being a magnificent creature.

But he was lost in a world of his own. After a long, long time he said I might rest. I got up and looked at his sketches. The charcoal ones weren’t that interesting because they were just my shape. But the chalk ones were of my face, and I was astonished how many colors he’d used to draw me. My skin was peachy and rosy orange and brown and blue gray — it was even green, where the leaf shadows were. And my hair was every shade of brown: rust and fawn and chestnut and gold. Oh, but those chalks looked tempting! I asked if I could touch them. He not only said yes, he showed them to me and let me make marks on a piece of paper.

They are all different, those chalks. Not just in color, but in texture: some of them hard and scrape-y and others are as soft as butter. The soft ones get put on top of the hard ones. David showed me how I could put colors together and smear them with my fingers. The smeared chalk looked like velvet.

I was enraptured. Then he said he would teach me to draw. He went and got a dandelion and made me look at it, and asked me what color it was. Of course I said yellow and green. But then he said to really look. I saw that the under petals — the green ones under the flower — overlap, and where they overlap there is just a hint of lavender. And there are two circles of petals on the dandelion — the inner circle of the flower is pinker and orangier than the outer circle. The outer petals are more like a lemon, that sharp yellow that reminds you of green, only when you look, there’s no green in sight. The stem is more than one color, too. Where the light hits the edge, there’s a kind of silvery perspiration — and parts near the bottom are purplish red and freckled!